TY - JOUR
AU - Lee,Chulhee
TI - Health and Wealth Accumulation: Evidence from Nineteenth-Century America
JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL - No. 10035
PY - 2003
Y2 - October 2003
DO - 10.3386/w10035
UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w10035
L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w10035.pdf
N1 - Author contact info:
Chulhee Lee
Department of Economics
Seoul National University
1 Kwanak-ro, Kwanak-gu
Seoul, South Korea
Tel: 310-867-3301
E-Mail: chullee@snu.ac.kr
AB - This study explores how the health of Union Army recruits while in the service affected their wealth accumulation through 1870. Wartime wounds and exposure to combat, measured by the company mortality from wounds, had strong negative effects on subsequent savings. Variables on illnesses while in service, if corrected for the potential bias arising from omitted variables by using instrumental variables, also greatly diminished wealth accumulations. The economic impact of poor health was particularly strong for unskilled workers. These results suggest that health was a powerful determinant of economic mobility in the nineteenth century. The strong influences on wealth accumulations of various infectious diseases, such as malaria, typhoid, and diarrhea, found in this study point out that the economic gains from the improvement of the disease environment should be enormous. This study also suggests that the direct economic costs of the Civil War were probably much greater than previously thought, if the persistent adverse effects of wartime experiences on veterans' health are considered.
ER -